


enough

by novoaa1



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: Anyways, Cuddles, F/F, PTSD, Protective Hope Mikaelson, god i love drake, it's cute, josie's panicking cause i mean. getting buried alive will do that to you, sorta - Freeform, theyre not together.... yet, uh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 20:36:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20442140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novoaa1/pseuds/novoaa1
Summary: So, Josie gets (almost) buried alive.Predictably, it wreaks havoc on her mental health.Luckily, Hope is there.





	enough

**Author's Note:**

> ok i'm sorry for any mistakes cause i don't rlly have time to edit rn (the term is starting); i jsust wanted to get this out sooner rather than later so that i can focus on classes

It goes like this: she gets dressed, curls her hair, powders her face with bronzer and highlight and a silvery-gold eyeshadow that makes her hazel-brown eyes pop—she doesn’t feel different; she doesn’t feel 16, but that’s okay. Maybe that’s just what growing up is supposed to be about. 

She thinks about Lizzie, wonders if the extravagant party her eccentric twin sister has planned for tonight is everything she hoped it’d be. Really, Josie doesn’t much care one way or another. 

She thinks about Penelope, too, who’s playing the most confusing game on all fronts between taunting Josie relentlessly, offering to be her date for tonight’s party, and stopping by a handful of moments ago to tell Josie a couple more reality-changing things that she’s terrified to believe for even the briefest of seconds. 

But, perhaps most of all, she thinks of Hope—the enthralling turquoise-blue of her irises, the way those long sweeping locks of chestnut-brown hair fall across delicate yet undeniably strong shoulders, whatever inanely flattering dress she’s wearing tonight that will undoubtedly hinder Josie’s ability to speak (much less think) for some time. 

She thinks about all of that, and she decides, for once in her life, she’s not going to do what’s expected of her. 

And, half an hour later, when she’s screaming through layers of foul-smelling well-packed dirt and the weight of it is crushing her lungs so powerfully she’s sure they’re going to collapse altogether and she’s somehow sobbing at the same freaking time because she’s terrified that the sight of her own mother burying her alive with that inexplicably cold expression on her warm features might just be the last thing she ever sees in this life and _God_, she’s not ready to go. Not yet. 

She can’t move, and she can’t really breathe, and the warm dirt seems to press more insistently against her with every passing moment—she knows for sure she’s dying for real that time when she hears MG’s muffled voice from above, and Hope’s and Penelope’s screaming garbled things all the while, because there’s no _way_ they came for her, all three of them, together. 

She’s not sure if she’s grateful or just terrified when they prove her wrong, when MG grabs her weakly grasping hand and yanks her forward from the dirt’s formidable hold with a burst of tenacious vampiric strength and she’s suddenly inhaling blessed oxygen to supplement the sour handful of dirt she spits distastefully from her mouth—it’s cold outside, she realizes, and her body shivers violently as the chilly night Virginia air surrounds her, her head dizzy and what little of her remaining awareness entirely compromised even whilst she feels multiple pairs of hands guiding her to her feet and too many quasi-familiar voices asking her unintelligible questions and a foreign touch hastily brushing at the dirt caking her pale skin. 

It goes like this: Josie turns 16 on a Wednesday, gets subsequently buried alive by a cheap apparition of her long-dead biological mother, and she knows without a single doubt that night, whilst she clutches at her mother’s and Lizzie’s hands to cast the spell to make her go (_again_) that she’ll likely never be the same ever again; what’s more, she doesn’t quite think it’s for the better.

(That scares her more than anything.)

— — 

Remembrance Day comes next, because Josie supposes that the universe isn’t quite done with reminding her that her biological mother is dead, that the cheap resurrected facsimile of her nearly killed Josie by way of a premature burial on school grounds, and, last of all, that Josie and Lizzie were given the decidedly morbid task of siphoning her power to make her leave. _Again_. 

And, this, too: she can’t sleep. At _all_.

She can’t relax when she crawls into bed at night, when Lizzie shuts off the lamp and bathes their room in total darkness, when she pulls up the warm comforter around her body and feels it crushing her like a vice until she’s sure it’s happening all over again: that she’s sobbing away the last of her life paralyzed beneath a foot (at least) of damp well-packed dirt that fills her lungs with each involuntary gasp, choking her until she’s dizzy, suffocating her until she thinks that this is what dying feels like, that this is how things will end for her. 

The first night is the hardest—she still feels the warm tingle of her mother’s touch lingering on her palm, eyes red-rimmed and stinging with the bitter remembrance of what might just be the most painful tears she’s ever cried, the sour taste of dirt persisting in her mouth no matter how many shots of overpoweringly minty Listerine she’d chugged just minutes before in a desperate attempt to make it all go away.

Lizzie thinks she should go see Emma, talk about what happened that night. Josie tells her that as soon as Lizzie does that she’ll do it, too; that always seems to shut her up pretty quick. 

She can tell Hope is worried, too, if the way their resident tribrid is hovering over her like an overbearing mother at every given opportunity is any indication—and, maybe, just maybe, there’s a fluttering in her chest every time that happens, every time Hope looks at her with that inexplicable softness in green-blue eyes, every time she places a hand at the small of Josie’s back and asks her if she’s alright… but, that’s not important. 

It’s not important that that distracts her from the feeling of dirt and slow asphyxiation and _dying_ even if only for the briefest of moments; it’s not important, because Josie refuses to let it be important, and that’s all she’ll say on that. 

Because, she can do this… right? 

(Honestly, she’s becoming less and less sure of that with every passing day.)

She doesn’t need Lizzie, or Penelope, or _Hope_—she doesn’t need to be saved, not after they saved her that night; hell, she isn’t even in danger right now. 

No, it’s no one’s fault but her own that she can’t cope, and God help her but she refuses to be a damsel in distress. Not _again_. 

(She can’t decide if that’s stupid or just realistic.)

— — 

She breaks—_shatters_, really—on a Tuesday. 

There’s nothing all that profound that causes it, either: she’s sitting upon the neatly-tucked bedspread in her room, studying for an upcoming test in Supernatural History, and it hits her—that feeling. Like she’s drowning. Like she’s sinking further and further into the Earth below without a chance in hell of coming back up. Like she’s _dying_. 

She’s clutching desperately at her chest as if that will somehow get her the oxygen she’s so perilously craving, hyperventilating like an untreated asthmatic after a full-length marathon, and God, but she misses Hope—she’s paralyzed but she misses Hope, and that means that she can feel her being absorbing the magic imbued within the floors, can feel the way it reaches out in powerful tendrils of sheer energy; she feels that, and she knows it means her magic is calling out for Hope, that Hope will no doubt hear it whether Josie truly wants her to or not, because right now she doesn’t think she can stop herself from wanting and craving and _needing_ if she tried. 

So, she doesn’t—with any luck, Hope’s off across town doing something stupidly heroic as per usual, or maybe busy at the LSD-themed party the witches are throwing out in the woods (though, since Hope’s never been one for socializing, that particular possibility is admittedly rather unlikely), or maybe she’s been slacking on her magic lately (which is really, _really_ unlikely) and she’s none the wiser to the full-scale freakout currently taking Josie by storm. 

(It’s stupid to hope, stupid to think that she might go unnoticed; what’s more, it’s rather ironic, especially after countless moments Josie remained wholly lost beneath the large shadow her charismatic twin always cast—because, here, now, when she craves that anonymity, that callous disregard she so often found herself directly on the receiving end of so badly it almost hurts her physically to endure the magnitude of it, she knows she won’t get it.

God, the universe must be enjoying itself, playing this astonishingly quaint epitome of a cosmic joke upon her at this very moment.)

She thinks she’s quite literally losing her mind right now, panicked breaths wracking her lean body in heaving gasps until her vision blackens around the edges—she vaguely registers a shattering noise off to her left that tells her she’s probably broken their second-story windows _again_ with the sheer immensity of her emotion-sensitive powers, but it’s terribly hard to care in any capacity because her lungs are collapsing in on themselves and she tastes sour dirt on her tongue and she knows that this is it, that this is what it feels like to die but she’s not ready she’s not _ready_ to leave yet, not when Lizzie still needs her and their father seems so lost and Hope—

_Hope_.

Her presence trickles through Josie’s veins quite suddenly then like a healing balm, a blessed remedy, quelling her raging fears to a dull roar and slowing her racing heart to something distinctly more manageable and effecting an altogether inexplicable sensation of tranquility and placid _calm_ upon her—her eyes are shut tightly now, and she only sees darkness but she knows it’s real, knows she’s not hallucinating, because the heavenly scent of her is permeating Josie’s nostrils, smelling so strongly of cinnamon and sweetened honey and the faintest hint of woodsy smoke and—

A second later, she feels two strong arms embracing her in a tight but undeniably soothing hold, an indistinctly familiar body pressing solidly against hers, perfect soft lips grazing the shell of her ear and whispering tender reassurances that she can’t quite ascertain but which serve to make everything feel okay again just the same, and God, she doesn’t care that she shouldn’t be here, baring her weakness to the last person she’d ever be foolish enough to rely upon in a crisis, falling into the firm embrace of Hope Mikaelson like it’s home—like _she’s_ home. 

She doesn’t care, because she can’t—she can’t focus on anything else right now, anything that spans even remotely beyond the fact that she’s here, breathing and above ground, her heart rate gradually slowing to something that doesn’t resemble tachycardia in the strong arms of someone she trusts… someone she _loves_.

(She’ll hate herself later for being so pitifully unguarded, she knows—because, really? ’Someone she loves’?

God, she needs to get a grip.)

No, for now, she just lets herself _be_—even if she’s sure as all hell that she’ll be sorely regretting it later. 

— — 

As it turns out, ‘later’ comes a hell of a lot sooner than she’d hoped—because her spectacular bout of unmitigated hysteria clears up all too quickly as she sinks into the surprisingly (or _un_surprisingly, if she’s being honest with herself) strong arms of a girl she used to know all too well once upon a time, the embarrassment and wholesale _shame_ descending upon her like pelting rain in a turbulent thunderstorm, only worsening with every moment the reality of her current situation grows ever clearer to her rapidly revitalizing senses.

Because, really, they’re here, hopelessly entangled with one another upon the cutesy-patterned bedspread atop her mattress, Josie’s weakened form curled securely into Hope, her body growing pliant and boneless beneath every whispered reassurance and praise Hope tells her in the safety of their momentous (and yet utterly silent) harmony—and, fuck, but she can’t help the way her mind jumps almost instantaneously into overdrive, the way her thoughts begin to race a mile a minute, uncertainty and fear and adoration welling up inside her with a dynamic intensity that leaves her well and truly breathless in its wake. 

She knows they’ll need to talk about this—she knows that they can’t stay here forever (no matter how fiercely she wishes the opposite were true). 

But, for now, she decides that it’s okay, despite everything within her saying it shouldn’t be—that _she’s_ okay. 

And, that’s enough. It has to be. 

— —

**Author's Note:**

> thoughts? 0_o
> 
> also here’s the link to my 


End file.
